Some product designs pursue complex design, with a touch of full screen design, and the “bright and colorful” functions are presented in front of the eyes; while some designs pursue simplicity, and strive to provide users with a simple experience through simplicity. In this article, the author summarizes three rules for us about the unsatisfactory tried-and-tested product design of simplicity first!
We communicated the first strategy of minimalist design: delete unnecessary! After we have determined which unnecessary functions or information to delete in the brainstorming stage, the design of the specific interface naturally becomes the focus of the next work.
At this time, if we want to achieve the goal of simplicity, we can use three tried and tested rules: what the organization must provide; hide the non-core; and transfer what is not good at.
You can remember these three rules first, you need to know what they mean, and listen to me slowly~
1. Content review
Do you remember what are the key points in the “remove unnecessary” strategy? Let’s review it first:
- When making a decision, we can try to focus our thinking on “why keep it and how much marginal cost is needed to keep it”; instead of just staring at “why should it be removed, and how much sunk cost it has lost”;
- Don’t expect users to avoid mistakes through their own learning, because this is not the responsibility of users;
- As designers, we should try our best to reduce the source of errors and kill them in the cradle. This is an important way to improve user experience;
- Smart default values can reduce user choices, effectively saving users time and energy! The default value of true intelligence will “focus” on what the user is doing and then predict the user’s next actions.
2. What the organization should provide
Next, let us enter today’s topic. In the face of specific interface design, if you want to be simple, the first thing you need to do is “provide by the organization.”
What the organization wants to provide is really unknown if you just look at these five words. So, let’s not hide it from you, I am like this too. However, this is just a blinding method of “inverted sentences”! When we put it another way, we can immediately put it back into its original form: “The content provided needs to be organized.”
Don’t ask me why I use “inverted sentences”. If you ask, it is to ensure the neatness of the rules, nothing more…
What does “provided content” mean? Naturally, these outputs are in the functional design stage, such as brain maps, flowcharts, and requirements documents. This is the so-called “to be provided”.
And the function detailed design stage, that is, when we want to design the interface, we naturally need to effectively “organize” these conceptual things!
So the question is, how should we organize these products? In fact, at the level of interaction design, we can proceed from these two aspects: block and fill.
3. Partition
The concept of “blocking” may be a little strange to everyone. But when I mentioned another term, everyone must be familiar with it and could immediately understand the meaning of “blocking”. This term is “functional module”.
User interface design is inseparable from block division. Carefully observe the interface of each product, and we will find that all interfaces are assembled piece by piece of content, and these modules are often separated from the Chuhe and Han boundaries.
So how many “blocks” are appropriate for an interface? The answer is a magic number: 7 plus or minus 2. Behind this number is the 7 plus and minus 2 rule of the seven classic interaction design laws.
The so-called 7±2 rule was formally proposed in the paper “The Magical Number 7 Plus and Minus 2: Some Limitations of Our Information Processing Ability” published by the American psychologist George A. Miller in 1956.
That is, in 1956, George Miller conducted a quantitative study on short-term memory ability. He found that the best state of the human mind can memorize 7(±2) pieces of information. After memorizing 5-9 pieces of information, the human mind starts Something went wrong.
